


circular motion

by goshemily



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Barricade Day, Canon Era, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Mild Boot Kink, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:45:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/pseuds/goshemily
Summary: “We should share,” Enjolras says, and finds he means it for truth, not only for gesture.“Wine?”“The bed.”





	circular motion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andsparkles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andsparkles/gifts), [harborshore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/gifts), [Ark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/gifts), [acchikocchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acchikocchi/gifts), [barricadeur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barricadeur/gifts), [arriviste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arriviste/gifts), [twofrontteethstillcrooked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/gifts), [thebridgesandtunnels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebridgesandtunnels/gifts), [miss_begonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_begonia/gifts), [goodshipophelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodshipophelia/gifts), [clenster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clenster/gifts).



> To everybody who got me into Les Mis, from the first diner explanation before the movie to every gmail thread after, YOU'VE BROUGHT A LOT OF SUFFERING INTO MY LIFE. Thank you.
> 
> To [goodshipophelia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/goodshipophelia), thank you for [your prompt](http://soemily.tumblr.com/post/161498849449/goodshipophelia-replied-to-your-post). I've missed writing.
> 
> To [Ark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ark) and [arriviste](http://archiveofourown.org/users/arriviste), thank you, as ever, for the much-needed hand-holding.

“Are you not worried, Enjolras? Did you leave anything important in your rooms?” For ‘important,’ Prouvaire means ‘dangerous,’ as though Enjolras would be fool enough to keep lists of arms and maps of caches unfurled to greet the sun from his window, or to meet the glance of an inspecting landlord.

“No,” he says. His plans are in his head, or better hidden.

Prouvaire bites his lip. “An infestation, though! What will happen to your books?”

“Somehow I don’t think the rats will want them.”

“Too dry to be swallowed easily?” Grantaire has come up unannounced, the noise of the crowded Musain masking an approach usually marked by song -- popular ballads, rude rhymes, and once on a cold November night the half remembered refrain of a lullaby that woke in Enjolras the feeling of a ruddy hearth.

“Paper is probably of less interest than apples,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire pulls a chair from a neighboring table and turns it so he can sit astride, chin on the rungs. He pretends wonder, limpid blue innocence a goad. “Are these rats the three beauties, then? Have you judged their greatness?”

“Am I the goddess of discord, you mean?” Enjolras hears his voice as quick as kindling. He is too used to this mockery to be patient, with Grantaire’s hangdog revels or with his own intemperate curiosity, rising ready and wary whenever Grantaire opens his mouth.

“Never; you may sow strife instead of the brotherhood you claim to seek, but no one could mistake you for Eris. Your nose is patrician.”

“Eros, though --” Prouvaire turns a speculative glance on Grantaire, whose ears unaccountably redden.

“The _point_ ,” Enjolras says, “is that I am to vacate my rooms while the landlord does something insalubrious or unpleasant to the vermin, and although I have not left anything that shouldn’t be found -- ” Prouvaire, who sighed at ‘vermin,’ looks hesitant “-- we are at a delicate time. I do need somewhere I can work in peace.”

“Not _for_ peace, though,” Grantaire says.

“It’s May,” Enjolras says simply, refusing the argument. “The year is nearly half over, and we turn toward the future with the earth’s revolutions, but not our own. Can we wait through the next six months as we have these last?”

Grantaire steals Prouvaire’s glass and says nothing.

“I can’t take you.” Prouvaire is all apology, his hands graceful as they list and negate possibilities. “Joly and Bossuet have lost their couch to unfortunate incident, and their bed is not large enough for a third --”

“A fourth,” Grantaire says, “and that ‘unfortunate incident’ involved Bossuet, a candle, and a vicious new cat, so I’m not sure but that you’d prefer the rats.”

“-- Courfeyrac is occupied with Marius, Combeferre with his studies --”

“Bahorel with his mistress,” Grantaire interjects.

Enjolras throws up his hands. “An inn, then! An inn, and if my landlord fails, Bossuet’s cat to visit my guests.” He cannot ask Feuilly, and he cannot trust any other acquaintances but these closest Amis with observing his work. 

Grantaire drains Prouvaire’s glass, at which Prouvaire reaches for the bottle on the table, pauses, and takes Enjolras’s. Enjolras reaches for the bottle in turn, and realizes they’ve emptied it.

“Will your work be safe in an inn?” Grantaire’s voice is quiet.

Prouvaire taps the table idly. His face is a study.

“You can stay with me, if you like,” Grantaire says.

“With _you_?” 

Grantaire blinks. “I am neither fish nor fowl, Gorgon nor Giant. Foul and goat I might answer to, but I can play the temperate host if it is required of me.”

“Can you?”

“Have a care,” Prouvaire says. To whom he speaks is unclear.

Enjolras considers the options presented: to impose on charitable but harried friends; to risk the Amis’ work to a more public place than the Musain’s back room; to attempt sleep in a chamber overrun; to face Grantaire in his own quarters.

“If I have failed in the past, Enjolras, it is because the task was too great for me.” Grantaire is diffident, his fingers careless on the stem, tracing a purple stain.

Enjolras’s lip curls. Prouvaire doesn’t see, but Grantaire does. “Alright.”

Grantaire pushes back from the table, clapping Prouvaire’s shoulder. “Jehan, we are off, to our doom or delight we cannot know, though we can suspect; I leave you to your dregs, or rather Enjolras’s, and I salute you in drinking from his cup. I myself haven’t the courage.”

“No,” says Prouvaire plainly, “though you are content to steal from mine.” His smile is fond.

“Wine is the true brotherhood of all men, a priesthood that makes all of us believers.” Grantaire stops, blunted, as though he’s just heard his own words. 

“Stay awhile, then? Do we rush?” The cold of unhappy doubt is in Enjolras now; there are pamphlets to write, and he can withstand Grantaire’s censure with calm ire, but to do it in the man’s own home leaves a pricking under his skin, a discomfort he cannot name. He tries to picture a room around Grantaire, but beyond a grimy table and a half dozen empty glasses the space is unformed. There is a bed, but indistinctly. Unchanged linen? Narrow, or wide?

Grantaire’s mouth is wry. “Does the great call of history not press upon you, and chivvy you, a schoolboy to his books?”

Enjolras breathes deep. “It does.” He is level. He gathers his satchel and papers and nods to Prouvaire, still looking somber, and follows Grantaire into the busy street.

“I was not born with the gift of winning hearts,” Grantaire says abruptly, minutes later when they are sunk in a silence so encompassing that Enjolras has begun to imagine he will work without interruption. Grantaire glances up at Enjolras from under lowered lashes. “I am too ready to laugh when I should cry, and too ready to cry when I should laugh; it angers the laity and torments the clergy. They live an ordered life, and confusion is foreign.”

“Thus do you Babel,” Enjolras says, unable to stop himself.

Grantaire grins, crooked. “Men are insufficient for their own salvation. I mean to say only that I cannot countenance how you try.”

To another friend, to allay timidity or hopelessness or the long weary drag of waiting, Enjolras might respond “How _we_ try;” to Grantaire, who offers only a presence that carries the promise of a future absence, he can give nothing. There is nothing he wants to give. Grantaire has professed to try, and has failed; it is not for Enjolras to grant absolution.

Grantaire turns into a narrow passage, and then into a courtyard dazzling for the violet evening that obscures the walls’ peeling paint. They enter a heavy door, and he ushers Enjolras up three flights of stairs.

A cipher, he stops outside his own rooms. “If I thought you had questions, I would tell you they would now be answered, but I cannot suppose you ever turn your thoughts from revolutions.”

It is a stolen pun, and Enjolras can only wonder at his abstraction. He waves Enjolras inside.

The room is dim; when Grantaire pulls back the curtains, it is revealed as pleasant, cluttered but without dust, surprisingly chaste. There are sketches of nude figures on what is a cleaner table than Combeferre’s, but no opium pipe, none of the molded or desiccated still lives of Enjolras’s lurid imaginings. The books are largely familiar from his own reading, though the volume of the Brothers Grimm is unforeseen. The spine of _The Iliad_ is cracked in three places.

“I have only the armchair and the bed,” Grantaire says. “The bed is yours, unless Sparta insists you take a pallet on the floor.”

Enjolras can see the bed through a half open door -- large. The bedclothes are rumpled but an orderly white. “I am more of Athens than you credit,” he murmurs.

Grantaire is sat upon the rug like a child as he takes off his shoes. “You are welcome to work at table, chair, floor, or bed; I am no man to judge where inspiration strikes.” 

“Thank you.”

“It’s nothing.” Grantaire runs a hand through his hair, disordering disordered curls, one boot discarded and the other forgotten. “It is little enough.”

Enjolras spreads his papers on the table. “You welcome me to your home.”

A crow’s look from Grantaire, beady. 

“To me, it is not little. I did not wish to chance the inn, and I preferred to avoid the rats.”

Grantaire removes his other boot. There is a hole in his stocking. He arches his feet.

“You do this, and I know you would do it for all the Amis. You’re with us, but not a comrade.”

He arches his feet again. “I only feel what others do.”

“And what is that?” The table is smooth under Enjolras’s palms pressing hard, seeking repose.

Grantaire shrugs his shoulders and doesn’t make the show of it he could. “That my arms are empty where they should hold something. That they ache for what they lack.”

“Hold a flag, then,” Enjolras snaps. “Or a rifle.”

“I am dying to be convinced, Enjolras,” Grantaire says, sober as the day is long, serious as Enjolras has ever seen him. The light from the windows striates his face.

“We’re all dying.”

“Some of us sooner than others.” His voice is bleak. 

Apathy wakes rage. “Some of us are men,” Enjolras says. “Some of us are ready for the call, and when it comes, we will not be lost for a game of dominoes.”

“No,” Grantaire agrees, small and unrepentant on the ground. “You’ll just be lost.”

Enjolras turns to his writing, silent. The acrid smell of ink focuses him, and he ignores Grantaire, who rises and begins to move around the room. There are sounds of preparation: the bed straightened, supper readied. A bottle is opened. Eventually he finds a candle at his elbow, and a full glass.

When he looks up at last, it is to find Grantaire stretched before the fireplace, lying on his stomach and perusing sheet music. He is making notations in the margins.

“Do you play?” It is disconcerting that there are facets of Grantaire unknown.

“Not well. I read with some grace, and count that a gift; I am to help Prouvaire envision a costumed choral staging of Beethoven, for the victory.” His mouth twists.

“Our victory?”

“Your victory.”

It is Enjolras’s turn to shrug. “You cannot see it.” 

“No.”

The coiling copper inside him, the curious wolf that watches Grantaire, prods. “Would you rather grant us doggerel?”

Grantaire laughs and shakes a merry death’s-head. “What more could you expect from a cur?”

“You are a man,” Enjolras says sharply. “Your choices are your own.”

“Not always.” He bows his head again to his paper.

“ _Grantaire_.” 

“There is bread and cheese laid ready in the cupboard, and apples if you dare.” Through his dark hair, Enjolras cannot see his eyes. He resolutely writes, lips firmly together, a stoppered jug. The wax runs down his candle. Shadows warp around him, creeping. It is not a visage Enjolras would have guessed at. He is intent on the music, curled into it, curbed. The urge to reanimate him writhes.

Homer is nearby, a good companion for the wine. Better to attend to that and not to provoke an unending tirade or more self-directed bile. Enjolras turns pages, languid, and drinks.

Grantaire says nothing else until Enjolras begins to think again of the bed, ghostly in the waiting dusk. “Are you tired?”

“Somewhat. Are you?”

“As I breathe; of life, and even more of sleep; of dreams; of myself.” He gets up and begins to unbutton his waistcoat.

“We should share,” Enjolras says, and finds he means it for truth, not only for gesture.

“Wine?” 

“The bed.”

Grantaire’s nimble fingers rest. “The lion lies down with the lamb?”

The air is close around them, weighing. Impatient sympathy for Grantaire’s melancholy only goes so far; Enjolras rolls his eyes.

“You surprise me; not your generosity --”

“It’s _your_ bed.”

Grantaire is still another moment, then shakes himself. He removes his waistcoat. His cravat is next. “Your proximity dulls the senses, because your light necessitates a dimming of what surrounds you; conversely, you call and we awaken.”

Enjolras begins to unknot his own cravat. Whatever waits in him is thrumming as he looks at Grantaire’s hands, hovering at his sides. “Do you?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know your effect. I thought you meant yourself for an open book, no obfuscation. A manual for revolution.”

“No man is a tome.”

“No; you are a tomb.” 

The words echo and roil in his head. “And what death would you choose?” Enjolras asks, frustrated despair almost equal to his sudden fury. He pulls off his cravat and drops it on the table. “A drunken old age, abed with too many willing partners?”

Grantaire stops. “Have I said something amiss?”

“My friends _choose_ to stand, Grantaire. It is a choice you have not made, but that does not make me their grave. None of us pretend there is no danger.”

Grantaire looks shocked, an insult in itself. Enjolras has simmered in the company of his taunts for months; to notice _now_ that no man wishes his brothers’ deaths ignores the depth of their belief, their readiness to sacrifice. It is a bruise on Enjolras’s tongue.

“My wordplay is not meant sincerely,” Grantaire says finally. 

“How should I know, when you only ever jest? Your actions, your inactions, are deliberate offense.” Grantaire’s eyes widen, and Enjolras mechanically strips off his shirt. “How am I to balance what you say, and weigh it, and know what you mean, when you only ever say one thing, and that is how I consign my brothers to the charnel house?”

A quick breath. Then: “I cannot always stop my mouth; it runs itself ragged, and my thoughts struggle to keep pace.”

“But you believe it.”

Slowly, as if with great concentration, Grantaire pulls his shirt over his head. It hangs from his hand, white surrender. “I believe you all go to your deaths. I do not believe you are responsible for theirs.” His voice rests between shame and defiance. His lashes hold all the darkness of the room.

Enjolras nods. The latent fire in him grows carmine, coals but no longer an inferno. He lives now on a knife’s point, balancing between emotions: certainty and horror twine together in these hot days of encroaching barricades. In the wake of this poor apology, his will to feud is sated. There are more desperate wrongs that require attention. History beckons.

Grantaire yawns unconvincingly, an offering.

Enjolras looks through his satchel. “I don’t have another shirt,” he says, drawn up. “I must wear this one tomorrow.” He folds it on the table, though usually he’s careless. He doesn’t want the vulnerability of his messes under Grantaire’s eye.

“You brought ink, but no fresh linen? Bahorel might question your priorities.” Grantaire meets his gaze. “Or he might not. But do remember to appoint a Minister of Appropriate Attire, please, when your revolution’s done. It will appease him.”

Enjolras is not a hesitating man, but now he hovers, half-undressed and unexpectedly unsure. To ask to borrow something of Grantaire’s in which to sleep… It is an unlooked-for intimacy, unwanted. His mind presents him with Grantaire’s clothing warm from his body, ridiculous; he’d borrow something fresh -- if Grantaire has anything fresh. His eyes go again to the bed, to the knowledge that he will lie where Grantaire sleeps, where Grantaire dreams.

“Do you wish a nightshirt? You find me fortunate to offer one, or two -- one for your modesty, and one for mine. They are newly laundered.”

“Are you always so fastidious of your sleeping?” Frankly, it is surprising that he has one clean nightshirt, let alone the promised two. Enjolras does not rake Grantaire, but he has done it often enough to know his coats are usually unbrushed, and his shoes unpolished. Everything with Grantaire is _un_ , a negative more than a nullity: unfinished, undone. _Unwanted_ lingers still, but he will not think it again. It would be impolite, when Grantaire shares his bed.

Grantaire looks amused. “Hardly; I rarely sleep, and then only after a long struggle in which I beg to submit to Morpheus, and he refuses me.” 

Blood quickens, but Enjolras rejects the images, puts aside a wanting Grantaire with an imploring mouth. Why should he plead for quiet dreams? Instead he asks, “Clean linen does not grant an easy mind?” Conversation with Grantaire is always a torrent, and the rapids are safer than these shoals.

Grantaire flushes slightly, as though he too realizes where they’ve landed. “I usually sleep bare,” he says. “Fewer ropes to entangle myself.” Whether he speaks plainly or of his dreams, Enjolras does not know.

“What do you ask for?” He sits and begins to tug at his tall boots, ready for riding toward a battle or over soldiers. It is not the current fashion, but he thinks Bahorel would approve.

“Rest,” Grantaire says, and strips off his stockings.

“Surely you have enough of that.” Most meetings end with Grantaire’s head sunk on his arms in a stupor of drink or boredom. Enjolras pulls more vicious at his heel.

“My nightmares preclude it.” He says it with no emphasis, a simple truth. When Enjolras looks up, Grantaire’s eyes are hunted, haunted. They move around the room as if finding monsters in the shadows. 

“What do you see?”

“The future.”

Enjolras gives up on his boot and gestures at Grantaire. “You know what I fight for, then.”

Grantaire comes forward, earnest entreaty a mask overlaying his honesty. He brushes his curls back from his face as though to make his point more clearly, but Enjolras thinks he does it to distract. “You’ve never hidden it. But the future I see is not the one you long for.” His words protect something that he thinks he’s exposed, some secret that lies in his dreams. 

“Will you help me?” Enjolras asks, and nods at his boots.

“This, I will do.” Grantaire kneels. “But do not ask me to help with your revolution. I will not hasten what I see coming.” His hair is an unruly sable, his head bent to his task. Enjolras feels his fingers press through the thin leather, one hand at Enjolras’s ankle and one at his calf to ease the boot along.

The room is close around them, May sultry instead of coy. Enjolras sinks his fingers into Grantaire’s curls and tugs his head up. His fist holds silk, and Grantaire’s eyes are enormous in the flickering light.

“Every man must give what he can,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire shudders and lays his head against Enjolras’s knee. His hands clench on Enjolras’s boot. “I cannot give more,” he says. His breath is damp through the thin cloth of Enjolras’s trousers. “Do not ask me.” Grantaire is a well gone dry, a barren place. There is nothing in his voice, and he pants like he’s run from Marathon with news of war. 

Enjolras releases him and runs his fingers through Grantaire’s hair gently.

After a few minutes, Grantaire returns to his task. He pulls off Enjolras’s right boot, and begins on the left. His face is bereft. Enjolras drops his hand to Grantaire’s neck, a steady pressure. He rubs a little; Grantaire’s skin is warm, and the whole expanse of his back invites touch. Enjolras presses against the top of his spine, feels the ridge of bone. Grantaire supplicates, his fingers light even as he drags the boot down Enjolras’s leg. Enjolras imagines he can feel the warmth of Grantaire’s palms, steady and surprising.

Grantaire removes the boot and sets it aside. He looks up, his eyes a startling blue in the gathering dark. Enjolras’s hand seems to move of its own accord to Grantaire’s jaw, his thumb stroking and coming to rest on Grantaire’s cheekbone. He kneels very straight, but there is a fine tremor in his arms. Deliberately, Enjolras brushes his red uncertain mouth.

One of the candle flames gutters.

“I have dreamed of this too,” Grantaire says quietly, “but I did not think you had.”

Enjolras pushes Grantaire’s head back with his fingertips, Grantaire’s soft mouth still parted, and searches his face. He has thought of Grantaire like this, but only as inculcation against further argument, only to build a wall between himself and the impossible. To find it is not impossible, not idle or idyll on his own cold sheets, is a greater understanding than Enjolras had sought. Grantaire is only ever a distraction. 

“I have not dreamed of it,” he says, watching Grantaire’s eyes track his lips. “But I have acted on it.”

Grantaire’s gaze drops, and Enjolras knows he can see that Enjolras is hard, that he will give Grantaire a night if not a lifetime. Enjolras is a man, and men are weak for all that they are strong, and Grantaire’s mouth is ready when Enjolras presses in with his thumb.

He tests Grantaire’s tongue with the pad, pushes down and lets Grantaire taste salt. He twists his hand, dragging Grantaire’s lip with his knuckle, grinding it. He scrapes Grantaire’s tongue with his nail, still testing, letting the moment hold until Grantaire makes some response.

His eyes are closed, his lashes stark in what Enjolras can see of his face in the light of the single candle. He looks beatified, reverent like this is the purpose he desires. He sucks gently at Enjolras’s thumb, draws it further in, caresses it and begs wordless for his fingers. Enjolras grants them, leisurely adding a second and a third into Grantaire’s mouth, drawing them in and out and deliberately stretching his lips. The only sounds in the room are wet and soft; the night outside is muted.

Language has deserted them. Grantaire does not open his eyes, and his hands vibrate, birds’ wings at Enjolras’s knees.

Enjolras shoves his fingers in further, sudden, determined to wring something from Grantaire. He makes a low noise in his throat but accepts them. His quiescence is unmooring. The pool of light around them shrinks, and Enjolras pulls back.

“Grantaire. Look at me.” 

His raises his eyes slowly.

“What do you want? Do you know?”

“I always have.” His voice is rough. “Do you?”

Enjolras considers him on his knees, the chiaroscuro of his face. Grantaire is always either wholly open or wholly closed, never in between, but tonight he waits outside Enjolras’s reach and does not seem to know it. It is an easy thing to go to bed for momentary pleasure, and Enjolras has done it with his fellows and his friends. There have never been any misunderstandings with those smiling partners, but Grantaire now pauses like Enjolras will read him, and Enjolras finds that he cannot.

“I do.” In his life, Enjolras wants the future. In this moment, he wants Grantaire.

He spreads his legs and Grantaire noses along his thigh, head ducked again, messy curls beckoning Enjolras’s hands. He runs his fingers through them, smoothes his palms along Grantaire’s shoulders, skids his thumbs ungentle over the pulse of his throat. The winged chair beneath him is worn velvet, a warm embrace when he leans back and unbuttons his trousers, lifts his hips so he can push them down. 

“You’ve come to share my bed, and yet you sit here as though we’d never left our cherished café.” The words are muttered into the fabric bunching at his thighs, and Grantaire grabs with his teeth as well as his hands to pull it further down his legs.

“I do. I think I like you thus.”

“On my knees?” Grantaire flashes a wildfire grin and bends to his exposed calf, kissing it. He tugs the tight trousers a little more and lifts Enjolras’s feet, one by one, to free him. He takes off Enjolras’s stockings slowly, palm lingering against the arch of his right foot. 

Enjolras runs the heel down Grantaire’s chest, and hooks his leg around him, draws him closer. “Yes. I like you on your knees.”

Grantaire’s hands finally, finally touch Enjolras’s cock. “I did not take you for a tyrant.”

Enjolras looks at him, notes his eagerness, how he sways forward where he kneels. Grantaire’s supplicant mouth is open as though he cannot help himself. “Didn’t you?”

He closes his eyes, leans only a little more, and swallows. 

He is a furnace. He makes the air of the stifling room tepid on Enjolras’s naked skin. He is a revelation.

There is no build up, only the act itself, again and again. Grantaire is frenzied, beseeching; his hands anchor him to Enjolras’s legs. The world coalesces to how he moves, fucking his mouth and throat on Enjolras like he parodies another act, except his lashes fluttering are so clearly grateful for this one.

The ocean of his want is incredible.

Enjolras wraps his fingers in Grantaire’s hair, and Grantaire bobbing pulls himself against them. He doesn’t allow time. There is no time to be allowed. The night presses, and the final candle goes out. Enjolras feels the warmth pooling in his limbs and knows he and Grantaire race each other against the sureness of the summer, and of the cobblestones dyed red.

Grantaire swallows once more and Enjolras comes, half in Grantaire’s mouth and when Grantaire pulls back, half across his face. Grantaire breathes harshly, panting. Enjolras tows his head down to his thigh, and Grantaire licks the skin, brushes against it, can’t settle. His hands are anxious again, petting Enjolras’s calves like a mark would profane them.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, “come here.”

Grantaire stumbles to his feet, unsure; Enjolras pulls until he steps out of his trousers, clumsy on trembling legs. Enjolras guides Grantaire to sit in his lap, curved into his side and back against the arm of the chair. In the dark, so quiet as to be unlike himself, he could be anyone.

Enjolras spits in his palm and then, remembering, drags his fingers across Grantaire’s wet lips, his damp cheek. He rubs at his own come, paints it in broad stripes and gathers it. Grantaire tongues at his wrist. 

He finds Grantaire’s cock, very hard and very ready. When he closes his hand around it, Grantaire whines softly and buries his face in Enjolras’s neck. 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, prompting. He strokes a few times, runs his thumb over the head of Grantaire’s cock.

Grantaire kisses his jaw open-mouthed, frantic hot wet kisses like he wants to memorize the feel of him. His limbs tense.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says again, and with another twist of his hand Grantaire comes.

He shivers against Enjolras and keeps kissing him. He rocks himself into Enjolras’s stilled hand even though it must be painful, sensitive skin rubbing raw. Even now, he tries to outpace fact.

Enjolras moves to wipe his hand on his thigh, but Grantaire shudders and breathes deeply and lifts his head. With familiar wickedness, he says distinctly, “My cup runneth over.” He raises Enjolras’s hand to his tongue and cleans it. His mouth is slow, placating, neither the begging surprising thing it was nor the bitter acerbic thing Enjolras knows so well. He swallows lightly around Enjolras’s fingers, each in turn. He mirrors how he tasted Enjolras before, an obscene act but hardly a conscious mimicry; the attention is delicate for all it is wanton.

Enjolras grins, and slides his fingers into Grantaire’s mouth, and deeper; slides them out again, and back. “We still haven’t made it to bed,” Enjolras says, and removes his hand.

Grantaire laughs. “Do you think we can find it?” The moonlight is so faint through the window that Enjolras can hardly see his face.

“We can try.”

“Always, you’re ready to try.” Grantaire gets to his feet and reaches for Enjolras, leading him around piles of books and the sharp edge of the bedroom door.

He seats Enjolras on the bed and wets a cloth at the basin. He cleans himself and passes it to Enjolras.

Enjolras runs it over his fingers and passes it back. “I cannot do less,” he says. His hands make fists in Grantaire’s cool sheet.

“Can you not live for the future?” 

“I don’t think I can.” He feels his way backwards to a pillow, and Grantaire climbs in beside him. “I don’t think it will let me.”

“You’d die for me. You wouldn’t want to, you’d disdain me as you did it, but you would. I’ve no right to do any less, but you know I don’t care to acknowledge my _right_.” Grantaire pulls the sheet over them and turns away. “I’d die first so I wouldn’t have to watch you. That’s my answer to your question.” 

Enjolras thinks of Grantaire’s uncertain hands and all the truths he’s given tonight, all the evasions he’s given in the past months and weeks.

Grantaire’s voice is hoarse. “Man is at best a grubby thing, so he should content himself with rooting in the mud, which is hardly changeable the world over; one mound of garbage is much the same as another, and rarely do they hold cast-off diamonds.”

Enjolras rolls on his side and stares at Grantaire’s back although he cannot see it. “Is that what you believe?”

“Maybe,” Grantaire says. After a long time, he turns again to face Enjolras. His breath is warm on Enjolras’s hand between them. “Maybe.”

They lie awake in the dark, each waiting for what is to come.

**Author's Note:**

> It's still June 6 where I am, and I wanted to do something to talk about remembrance. And about Enjolras wearing boots.
> 
> The title is from Martín Espada's poem "[Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands (Pellín and Nina)](http://search.proquest.com/openview/6f45fd5cf815363cc5ea558b4dc97db9/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1816503)," because I'm me and I couldn't resist.
> 
> Enjolras, Grantaire, and Jehan discuss the [Apple of Discord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_of_Discord), the [Gorgons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon), and the [Giants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giants_\(Greek_mythology\)). It's Beethoven's "[Ode to Joy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87qT5BOl2XU)" that Grantaire annotates with suggestions for an epic staging; all men become brothers.


End file.
